I took a risk yesterday

and, after searching in a social media site, made contact with someone I last saw over twenty years ago.

This may not seem very unusual to most people but, for me, it was. It is not the sort of thing I usually do at all. I have never been the sort of person who can "just call on" someone else. I have never understood the sort of social life where people contact other people on impulse and suggest going somewhere. No, I make arrangements to do it in advance. Most of my friends are the same. I think it is a generational thing. 

I grew up in a family where visitors came by prior arrangement. We went to them by prior arrangement. It did not happen often. It is also highly unlikely other people were very different. The means of communication was different back in the last century. There were no mobile phones and no computers. If you wanted to communicate with someone you did so by letter, by phone or face to face. There were telegrams and eventually that wonder we called "the fax". 

Not so long ago I was talking to someone who said much the same thing. He was talking about how social arrangements for Saturday nights were made at school during the week. If someone did not turn up at the appointed place at the appointed time there was no way of getting in touch. I tried to explain this to an eight year old the other day and he could not understand it at all. He has a mobile phone. It can do no more than make and receive calls to a limited range of people but it is still instant communication. 

But is communication really any easier now? The demise of the phone book has left us without the means to simply look a number up. There is no equivalent for mobile phones. Accessing the electoral roll is no longer possible without good cause. (You can tell them who you are looking for and why and they will confirm or deny or, in very rare instances, give you an address.)

It is why I went to social media. The name I was looking for is not a "Mary Brown" or "John Smith" sort of name. It is unusual. I found four people with that name on social media. Three of them live in other countries so I thought the fourth was likely. I wrote the message and pressed send. If nothing happened then at least I had tried.

Yes, I was lucky. It was the right person. They professed to be delighted to hear from me, had "often wondered" etc. The information I needed was quickly supplied (although I wondered if they would even have it) and there was the "we must meet". I wonder if we will. If they do contact me again to make arrangements will I want to go? Would we have maintained contact if we lived closer? I doubt it but it did set me wondering about the ways and means of contacting people now...and then.  

 

354 days of 40'C

and above in this city since January 1st, 1888?

There is a letter from someone in our state newspaper telling us this. (The writer apparently has been working on this statistic for some time and says, "Yes, get a life" as he comments.)  He goes, "That's 0.7% of 50,405 days at the time of counting. In twenty-nine years the temperature never reached 40'C. In 1908 there was a "heatwave" with the temperature going over the 40'C mark for six days and then four days. 

My great-grandparents had not air conditioning. They had no electricity. They tried to keep things cool with wet towels but my great-grandmother still had to cook on a wood burning stove.  Yes, food had to be cooked because so much would spoil in the heat. 

My grandparents did not have much more. There was no air conditioning. My paternal grandmother never had more than one tiny electric fan. She would turn it on for an hour after she had done the housework and given my grandfather a cooked lunch. 

When the Senior Cat as a child all my grandmother had was a "cool safe" with a block of ice and a drip tray to collect the water as it melted. She could keep milk and butter there overnight but not much more. They eventually had a tiny refrigerator but there was a limit to what could be safely kept even in that. She shopped most days in summer and walked to the shops in the heat to do so. 

We have been grumbling about the heat for the last few days and I am not looking forward to the size of my electricity bill but I cannot work in extreme heat. (The computer, rightly, complains. It sulks in the heat.) There has been increased talk about "global warming" and how the temperatures are caused by that. I find it odd that some years back we were being told we were heading for another "ice age". Do the climate experts really know? 

 

Our electricity system is failing

and the power network people have sent messages out to say that next Tuesday we will be without power altogether. It is a "planned outage".  They apparently have to do some work on the system.

It will take more than some repairs to deal with the issue. I live in a city in one of the driest and hottest places on earth. I am watching in despair as successive governments make decisions which contribute to both these things. They are cutting down trees for a golf course that most people will never use in an area which already needs far more trees. They keep telling us "solar, solar, solar" and that "look, this big battery solves the problem when the sun goes down". They are cramming more and more low level housing on increasingly small plots of land, building houses with black roof tiles and no eaves. Street trees are further apart to make way for cars. 

Yes, we are told to worship "renewable" energy, sport and single dwellings which we reach by cars, preferably electric cars. We actually pay considerably more for electricity than the neighbouring states although, so we are told, more of our electricity is produced by those wonderful "renewables". Something has gone very wrong here. 

The last couple of days have been brutally warm for city dwellers. My electricity bill is going to be far too high. I have tried to use air conditioning system responsibly. I do not leave it on all night or even all day. I know other people who do. There is good ceiling insulation here but not everyone has that. New homes must have it but how many are putting in the expensive batting we had in the last house I lived in? I don't imagine many people can afford it. We would not have been able to afford it but for getting the remainder from a much larger installation at a reduced price.

Cold can kill just as readily as extreme heat. Extreme cold can be very dangerous indeed. We recognise that but people forget extreme heat. The workmen arrived to start replacing the old and rusty guttering yesterday. They knocked on everyone's doors to let them know and my first words were, "If you need more water don't hesitate to come and ask." The youngish man standing there looked startled but I meant it. They needed it. They can ask again today.

We need to rethink this "renewable" idea. It isn't going to save the planet. It is actually contributing to the problem. We have lost far too much valuable farm land and valuable green cover to the renewable gods. We contribute less to those nasty emissions in a year than China does in a day but they keep telling us that we can save the planet by going down the "renewable" path.  I don't think it is going to happen. It is not yet 9am and I am already a hot and unhappy cat.  

  

"It is too dangerous to go out"

was the message relayed to me yesterday.  It had taken fifteen days to reach me - from Iran.

While the rest of the world has been focussed on what is happening in places like Gaza, Syria, Ukraine and Sudan there has been a major uprising in Iran as well. Much has been made of the truly appalling behaviour of the ICE agents in Minnesota, of the weather, of this... and that... and more elsewhere. There has been very little coming out of Iran. 

Oh yes, riots. We have been told there have been some riots. There have been a few short clips on the news. Oooh...some people died. There is the late Shah's son talking about it. People want an end to the rule of the "supreme" leader. They are tired of being told how to dress and how to behave and how to think. Yes, all very sad. It's wrong but...

Really? Is that all? Have you any idea what is really going on there. Do you care? Do you actually care? 

I wrote recently about someone who was there to do something to help. He was able to leave...but only with difficulty.

The other message came from someone who lives there. She is a retired teacher of English who still tutors students on an individual basis.  From time to time G... has helped with communication issues. I have never met her in person but I suspect I would like her if I did. I sense she has an excellent sense of humour. It matters in a country like that. 

Right now though there is little to laugh about. Two of her students have been badly injured. Others live in fear of their lives. The regime may be claiming they are not imposing the death penalty on protestors but the very fact they are learning English is danger enough. The death toll is believed to be far greater than our news services are reporting.

It is curious that our news services are making so little of what is going on there. It is not simply the difficulty of getting news out - when has that ever stopped them making claims?  It is not simply because those involved fear for their lives. There are  people willing to take those risks. 

Are we being cowards? I suspect we are. The person who told me it is too dangerous to go out is relying on others to do her shopping and help her when she needs it. She has such poor eyesight she cannot even see what is going on but she has been listening for years and knows what is going on. We are closing our eyes and our ears. It is easier that way - and it may come back to bite us.  

"Saluting the flag"

was something we did every Friday at school assembly. We recited the lines about who we were, loving our country and so on as we stood there in neat, straight lines. Sometimes we were made to repeat it because it did not sound as if we meant what we were saying. 

I am not sure I ever meant what I was saying. It was just one of those school rituals which had to be endured. It was marginally better than "PE" or "nature studies" but that was about all. I often wonder what other children made of it all. I suspect most of them just accepted it as something that we did.

What new migrants made of it all is an even greater mystery. We had a few in my early years at primary school, even one or two who did not speak English. They soon learned. We taught them out in the school yard.  

There was only one flag back then. It was the same flag for everyone. We were taught how to draw it and how it had come into existence and how it was important. There were "flag monitors" who raised and lowered the flag each day. They knew how to do it "properly" too. It was attached and detached correctly, folded with precision in the correct manner.

We were taught about explorers in this state, of the importance of the wool industry and rust resistant wheat. More than one father was a "wharfie" who loaded the wheat bags on to the ships which queued in the port.

Today is our national holiday. Children no longer "salute the flag". We have two flags, sometimes three. Many children are now told they belong to another ethnic grouping even while they are legally citizens of this country. Some people say it is a day of mourning. They might be an increasing minority but they get a major share of the day's news and a recent $1.48m grant from the government to investigate if the date should be changed.

The wool industry has declined dramatically. Wheat is being genetically modified. The grain there is goes to silos and wheat bags have all but disappeared. The "wharfies" still exist but they drive cranes to load containers on to ships in the outer harbour. Their sons search for employment in other places.

Today is now forecast to be 45'C - up from the previous forecast of 40'C. We will be told this is "climate change".  Yes, things have changed - but are they all for the better?  

So we didn't go to Afghanistan or

Vietnam or anywhere else there was a war on?

I can understand the furious European response to President Trump's suggestion they did not pull their weight in those wars because it is much the same as that of those in Downunder.  We did go to war and we lost service people in them. And yes, it does matter to us and to our European allies. It matters a lot.

My first real confrontation with war was in my teens. The Senior Cat was appointed to sort out the problems in an "area" school which was based in the middle of a "soldier settlement". These soldier settlements were a government project designed to give returned servicemen employment on the land. The problems associated with them were many. 

On the Sunday after school started for the year I happened to answer the house phone. There was a terrified voice at the other end. The words still haunt me. ".... my father is trying to kill my mother".  This child's father was chasing his wife across the paddock (field) with a hot poker. The father thought his wife was the enemy. He had, like so many of the men over there, been so traumatised by the war that he was having yet another episode of mental illness. The Senior Cat had been told about these incidents. He had been told what to do. The farmer was stopped before any physical harm was done and taken to the city for treatment but it was an experience I have never forgotten. Yes, frightening but not nearly as frightening for me as it must have been for that family. They considered themselves among the "lucky" ones - they came back alive.

ANZAC day came not too much later in the year. The school stopped for the day. Everyone went to the service. As Guides and Scouts we wore our uniforms - something city children did not do but there was a special dispensation for us. We were expected to participate. I saw grown men weeping for the first time in my life. It was another salutary experience for us. If they went and played "two up" while getting drunk in the local "club" it was understandable on that day.

In my last year at my last school one of the former students was killed in Vietnam. That one of our own was old enough to go to war and be killed did not seem real.  I did not know the boy as I was new to the school but the others had known him well, mostly as a footballer. It was a long time before the days returned to normal and his name was mentioned as a student rather than a soldier. I was careful not to talk about him at all for fear of being seen as "interfering". 

I went on later to university in  London. I met a young man who was by then working as a civil servant. We developed a relationship and were planning a trip back here for Christmas to tell my parents we hoped to marry. He was going to join me in Singapore after he had completed a task in Vietnam. It never happened because he was knifed on a street corner as he waited for a colleague to buy something. He was still seen as "the enemy" even though the war had finished some years before. My life has been very different because of what happened there but Mr Trump would no doubt simply shrug and say, "Too bad. There are plenty of other men out there." No, there aren't. I have never felt the same way about any other unrelated male. Almost two years ago his mother left me her wedding ring. It is in a bank deposit box in England. She felt I was her last contact with her son.  

A former neighbour served in Afghanistan. He won't talk about it but one day the Last Post was sounding on some program on the radio as we were talking outside a business and he grabbed me so hard that I was bruised. I said nothing because there was nothing I could say that would comfort rather than embarrass him. 

The US President has absolutely no idea about these things. The idea that the rest of the world has simply stood behind American service men and women is wrong. That is in no way intended to denigrate their role. It is in no way intended to suggest that the role they played was not important but to suggest that others held back and let them do all the work is wrong. Perhaps I should not criticise the President of another country, a country which is supposed to be a close ally, but I am conscious of the fact that he avoided the draft - college and something to do with his foot, a spur on the heel or something? I know Americans who went to war and then went to college...and some who never got to college because they went to war.

Someone posted a comment this morning that the late Queen Elizabeth II saw more active service than the whole Trump family combined. That is correct. You need to apologise Mr Trump.  

  

I have re-verified my "details"

and I am not about to do it again...and again.

The bank wants me to "reverify" my details. This is now a "legal requirement" which is more about trying to stop money laundering than it is about the safety of small accounts like mine. I accept it needs to be done but doing it once should be enough. I should not need to do it three times. 

I have my everyday working account. This is the one my debit card is attached to. I have my savings account which, for reasons best known to three government departments and myself is where I get my miniscule allowance. I also have an account which has almost nothing in it but is there for a very specific purpose. The money in it does not belong to me. The bank is fully aware of the purpose of that account.

Now I have had three separate requests to "reverify" my accounts. Simple? No. I fall at the first hurdle. I do not have a driver's licence. My passport is being renewed and I cannot use the old one for this purpose. Medicare card? You are supposed to be able to use that but, for some reason, the system will not accept mine. Birth certificate? How does that help? It does not give them my current address or the address to which my mail is sent? Why cannot I simply say, "I live here. You send my mail here. Now look it up on the electoral roll. I am not a "silent" voter." (Silent voters do not appear on the public electoral roll.) 

Banks probably do not have access to the electoral roll now. Once upon a not too distant time everyone had access to it. There would be a copy in the local library. Now it is "protected" information. You have to have good reason to want to consult it, indeed you will hand the information you have over to someone else to do it for you. Only MPs have that information available for personal use outside the offices of the Electoral Commission. 

The idea that this is somehow about keeping our personal information "safe" is something I find hard to understand. It seems there is a demand for more and more personal information every time we interact with any service at all. Our GP had to provide two different forms of ID this week just so she could sign off on a form for me. It used to be that just her provider number and signature were enough but not any more.

I am not sure where all this information goes or how it is used or even if it is used. It seems unlikely but government departments seem to be in love with it. If they can dream up something new to ask they will. 

I reverified my details once. I provided the old passport number before I sent it off to be renewed. It is out of date but all the other information is up to date. It is all the bank needs - until I get my new passport...or they decide to accept my "proof of age" card. It would be easier to really be a cat.